Sam Neill Quotes

Shakespeare is rich and beautiful, and it can be an amazing experience to read and to watch and to work on.

Acting is like any other art form, in that you have the option to go very big or go very small.

I've been doing Shakespeare readings with my friends for years.

Anyone can play anyone in Shakespeare. I don't think there are limits.

If you can read, then you can recite Shakespeare. But that's not acting.

Clarity is so important for Shakespeare.

I'm constantly intimidated by Shakespeare's work. Trying to decipher what he's saying and holding on to that thought - not just as an actor, but as a human being - is a rigour.

Anything one can do to provoke and inspire an interest in the works of Shakespeare in a young audience is fair game. Anything.

You can find a connection with any Shakespeare role you play.

Remember, I have a Ph.D. in English literature.

I think my strength is always been in being very natural. I think Shakespeare and things like that would be more a stretch for me.

It's an intuitive exercise to do a Shakespeare play and to go through a Shakespeare play.

What I learned as an actor was the only way you could really do August Wilson's work, you had to leave an ounce of your essence on that stage,... Otherwise it was impossible.

I became fascinated by the fact that you could translate written material into performance.

In school I really loved Shakespeare, and I participated in a country-wide Shakespeare competition.

I've played Lear three times, I would love to do it again.

I am always more interested in performance and character depiction, and my direction says as much.

I don't think there's anything wrong with someone having to read a poem twice. Or even a book.

An actor cannot be a censor. I'm there to interpret.

The fact is, as actors, everything we do, bad or good, is a contribution. To me, it is a positive thing to give people as wide a range of human behavior with some sense of understanding of that behavior or some clue to it.

With Shakespeare, the hard work is to find out why he said it and how it can relate to the audience.

With Shakespeare, because you invest so much time in working on material, it always sort of stays with you to some degree.

Shakespeare is a wonderful language to speak, but it's also a world to get your mind into thematically.

Simon Russell Beale is an incomparable speaker of Shakespeare and a superb all-round actor.

A play, after all, is a mystery. There's no narration. And as soon as there's no narration, it's open to interpretation. It must be interpreted. You don't have a choice... Each play can become many things.